This collection is the result of many years. I inherited the interest in the history of learning from my teacher, Pentti Aalto. In order to learn more, I started as a young PG student going through, year by year, Indological, Oriental and Linguistic journals, starting with the Journal Asiatique and the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. Soon I noted that the obituaries offered interesting additions to what is told by Windisch and started a file. According to my own interests, I also decided to include the scholars working on Iranian, Indo-European and Tibetan. Especially in the 19th century they almost without exception had also to do with Sanskrit. At one stage I decided to restrict my collection to those who died before 2000.

In the early 1990s I began to move my handwritten files to computer. With this work, which took several years as it was done beside more important obligations, the collection achieved its present form and the idea of publishing it in some form began to crystallize. In 1995 I had proceeded to letter K and decides to present my plan at the German Orientalistentag in Leipzig. Five years later I had covered all letters to Z, but negotiations with some publishers came to nothing and I realized that perhaps I had collected too much. The new millennium brought many new obligations and I put the collection aside, although still adding every new piece of evidence I encountered. The situation only changed in 2015 at the Sanskrit Conference in Bangkok, where I spoke about my collection with Dr. C. Krümpelmann. He was keenly interested and suggested that I should contact Waldschmidt-Stiftung. I followed his advice and this is the result. I have carefully read and revised all articles – it will still take some time until I reach Z – and added much information found in the Internet. But the extent the collection, about 1200 pages in print, has caused a further problem. English is not my native language and I know only too well that I have committed some mistakes, but it was impossible to arrange a language check.

For the beneﬁt of my future critics I would like to confess right now that the criteria of inclusion have never been seriously considered. Even a small claim has been accepted for inclusion. Anthropologists, archaeologists, art historians, authors of Indological dissertations, missionaries and colonial ofﬁcers interested in studies, travellers, teachers of Indian languages, popularizers, and translators of Indian classics have all been welcomed. In Iranian studies, Comparative, Ancient, Middle, and Eastern Iranian has been accepted, only Modern Persian has been more or less excluded (if not related to Indian history). Excluded are also the so-called Soviet “Indologists” who have only written on modern economy (and that often with a strong bias).

One point will surely be mentioned by critics: the rather random restriction of this collection to “Western” scholars. I am fully conscious of this, but I think it cannot be helped. For one thing the number of Indian Indologists is just so big that it would be extremely difficult to collect and publish a full directory, and even more so for one working outside India. It is difﬁcult to ﬁnd enough information about many of them, at least in European libraries. This difﬁculty of ﬁnding information (in this case connected with my own linguistic shortcomings) also helds true with Chinese and Japanese scholars. In any case I have also made a ﬁle of Indian (as well as of other Asian) Indologists, but it is far from ready for publication – perhaps the situation may change, if I find competent collaboration. But in too many cases there is now after the name just a reference to one or two publications and nothing else.

Even with these limits, the material of Western Indology is enormous and difficult to cover. I know that some parts are defective and certainly there are also mistakes. I could have continued collecting and polishing it years and years, but now it seemed wise to let others have a look on it and contribute their welcome additions.

I have tried to use a compact dictionary style. Therefore I have left out the article e.g. before the names of universities, etc. Quite often even “university” seemed unnecessary, when there is only one (relevant) university in the city. Thus when someone works “in Munich” it refers to the city in general, but “at Munich” indicates the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität there. In some cases when there really are several relevant academic institutions in the same city (e.g. in London and Paris), a fuller name is given.

An asterisk * before a source indicates that this source was not used, sometimes not even seen, by me. This mark, however, has only been used for biographic references listed under the heading Sources, and no attempt has been made to check everything listed under Publications. The extent of the bibliographic notes varies much. When there is a good printed bibliography easily available, not so much is included here. Even then, all books dealing with South Asia are listed, but not minor articles and only rarely any reviews. Important writings of important people are of course mentioned, but often I have also taken some pains of listing the writings of obscure people as completely as possible. To take just one example, Theodor Bloch, who in his times was quite competent as Indologist, but died early and is now more or less forgotten, has got very full treatment.

The alphabetical order is the simple way of arranging the material, but soon I found out that many difﬁcult decisions were involved even here. The German umlaut (Ä, Ö, Ü), Danish Æ, Ø, Swedish and Finnish Ä, Ö, Hungarian Ü, Ű, Ö, Ő, are interpreted as Ae, Oe, Ue. Scandinavian Å is an equivalent of O (in Danish it is often written according to the earlier orthography as Aa and arranged accordingly). For Russian (also Ukrainian and Bulgarian) the international transliteration system, with e.g. c, č, š, šč, ž instead of ts, ch/tsh, sh, shch, zh, also j instead of y and h instead of kh, has been used, and for Serbian, the Croatian orthography. Modern Greek names have been transliterated according to the classical norm (the only exact one commonly accepted), modern spelling is given in brackets, and occasionally also as a cross-reference.

Enclitic prepositions in German (von, von der, etc.), French (de, du, but not La), Dutch (van, van den, van der, de, te, t’, etc.), Swedish (af, von), Italian (di, but not De, Della), Spanish (de), and Portuguese (da), although part of the surname, are not taken into account in the alphabetical order, and are therefore given in the end of the name, after ﬁrst names. But I am still wondering, how to deal with the Portuguese vacillating between da Costa, d’Acosta and Dacosta.

A difﬁcult case is presented with the Latin monastic names. Different orders have different kinds of names, which cannot always be dealt in the same way. Some orders (like Jesuits and Lazarists) do not have separate monastic names, but use the lay name instead. The Latin type consisting of a ﬁrst name, the preposition a, and one or two saints as used e.g. by the Carmelites have been taken as one whole and thus arranged according to the ﬁrst name (e.g. Paulinus a Sancto Bartholomaeo). On the same way I have also dealt with the Capuchin names consisting a (monastic) ﬁrst name, preposition and the place of origin (e.g. Cassiano da Macerata). A cross-reference is given from the lay name (in these examples Philip Wesdin and Giovanni Beligatti), if it is well-known. Occasionally a cross-reference is also given under the “surname” part of these names. A word of warning must be given for such hybrids as Cassiano Beligatti, combining ﬁrst part of the monastic name with the lay surname. I cannot get rid of the inconsistency of using Latin for Carmelites and Italian, etc. for Capuchines as this is also the way of the majority of my sources.

The case of Hindu and Buddhist monastic names is still somewhat open. Generally, the lay name is used (Anton Gueth), and a cross-reference is provided from the monastic name (Nyānatiloka). Although some cases (like our present example) are quite clear and ofﬁcial, many other such names do not hail from formal ordination, but are self-made orders or just nom-de-plumes. Nevertheless, Agehananda Bharati is given under his (Hindu) monastic name.

To return to the laymen, I am fully conscious of the fact that in Iceland there are no surnames (with the exception of a few nom-de-plumes), but as the few Icelandic scholars and literates included are abroad generally known by their patronyms (often wrongly supposed to be surnames), they are arranged according to these patronyms (e.g. Jörundur Hilmarsson).

Even when often seen, I have not followed the vulgar habit of referring to a person by the last part of his composite surname. Such cases I have not deemed worthy even of a cross-reference. An uneducated reader must therefore vainly search under Poussin and Sacy what is rightly found under La Vallée Poussin and Silvestre de Sacy.

The list of thanks is long. In the ﬁrst place I must mention Oskar von Hinüber who generously allowed me to borrow and go through all his considerable ﬁles during my stay in Freiburg in 1994/95. D. Schingloff presented a copy of the part related to biography in his card index and W. Rau promised free use of his large collection of pictures. For a number of valuable data and references on German scholars P. Wyzlic (Bonn) and G. Zeller (Tübingen). For books, copies and comments Hans Bakker, Liviu Bordas, L. van Daalen, Rahul Peter Das, S. D’Onofrio, Helmut Eimer, Peter Flügel, G. R. Franci, Eli Franco, Gunilla Gren-Eklund, Jan Houben, Andrew Huxley, R. Lardinois, Paolo Magnone, Iwona Milewska, Karin Preisendanz, Ferenc Ruzsa, S. Serebriany, Jayendra Soni, Lidia Sudyka, Maurizio Taddei, Allen W. Thrasher, Y. Vassilkov, A. Vigasin, Gyula Wojtilla and Y. Zavhorodniy. Also Institute of Asian and African Studies (now part of the Department of World Cultures), University of Helsinki, and in particular Bertil Tikkanen, Harry Halén, Tapani Harviainen and Kaj Öhrnberg, and the Finnish Society of the History of Learning and Science. C. Krümpelmann for urging me to contact Waldschmidt-Stiftung and make my collection public.